It's Your Loss Podcast: Episode 4 - Dead Bodies Aren't Real

Sam, @Dir_Simmons on TIkTok, talks about doing what it takes to care for a family of five in uncertain times, the loss of school-time friends, and why Ganondorf reminds him of his father.

Music by Guilherme Silva (On Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/guimoraes)

Official Intro by Suzana J (Her website: https://www.suzanasvoice.com/)

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Before we start this podcast, I want to say that every project I have pretty much has

(00:04):
a village behind it, and this one is no exception.
I want to thank the patrons who stepped in on my Kickstarter to really make sure that
this got off the ground.
Denise Grady, Caden White-Wattam, Amanda Peake, Todd A. Davis, Jay Grant, and Corey
Watson.
Without you guys, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with the awesome guest that I'm

(00:28):
about to talk to.
Thank you so much.
Welcome back to the It's Your Loss podcast.
Welcome to It's Your Loss podcast, where raw stories of resilience and healing are told,

(00:52):
all while uncovering and destigmatizing the diverse symptoms of loss.
Welcome back to the podcast.
If you missed last month's episode, he's doing great.
Instantly.
It's your loss.
There we go.
We got in there.
I'm Michael DeBlanc, and I have Sam Simmons here who-

(01:14):
Director Simmons on TikTok.
Director Simmons.
Yes.
Give the title some respect.
We became acquaintances over TikTok, and I think we just became friends over some cheap
Mexican food, so pretty excited.
I mean, you can call it cheap.
I was the one that was paying for it.
That's true.
And I will pay you back in the free water that comes from my picture.
I'm like, hey, that works.

(01:34):
It works.
So you're the kind of guy who I've already realized that a conversation can go anywhere.
So we're going to start this off in one direction, and we're going to see where it goes from
here.
So I'm just going to ask you-
You're with the flow.
Yeah.
What have you lost?
Way too many games at Fortnite, honestly.
It's really bad.

(01:55):
I'll drop down into like a tipsy town- not tipsy town, but no.
What's the big city?
And then I'll just like die in 99th, like every single time.
I'm really bad at games.
Yeah.
Any of those Royale games I'm pretty horrible in.
Fortnite is even worse because they get distracted by the colors.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
The colors, the shininess, I'm like, oh, all this is pretty, and I'm going to be capped

(02:15):
like from yards away.
And I've tried doing the more realistic one, PUBG, and-
I haven't played it yet.
I've heard good things.
I mean, it's not bad.
It's not bad.
The only problem is, is I still suck at that game.
So yeah, I'll make it to like maybe 70, you know, 70% of the people who were before that.
Is that also like one of the top 100 sort of things?

(02:37):
Like where you have 100 people in there and then you have to survive to another one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Definitely.
Okay.
So I've never actually played it.
It just happens. And very gritty, we took snapshots from 1940s Russia.
Right.
scenery.
Well, I mean Fortnite is really realistic also.
I mean, after you get shot, you get danced on in default, of course by Peter Griffin,

(02:58):
who just happens to be very buff.
You know, that happens all the time.
I'm so glad it chose-
I don't know what you're talking about.
Actually, because when they announced Peter Griffin, and I was like, oh, that's the metrics
on it.
I mean, your hip box is going to be huge, but now we've decided to go with Buff Griffin,
which I imagine most of the hitbox is just in his gen.
More than likely.
More than likely.
Honestly, it's huge, he's shaped like a box.

(03:19):
So, but I will tell you, for those who are wondering
if we're just gonna talk about him losing video games,
no, evidently he lost family members and a friend as well,
but we'll get into that in a minute.
Yeah, I've lost a few friends.
I put one question on my website,
just to make a different angle of conversation
and it is what's your favorite game?
And, yeah, I get different answers all the time

(03:42):
from ranging from card games, video games,
and the one that you put, I don't know if you remember,
but I'll go ahead and let you know.
Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.
Ultimate, specifically.
Yeah, yeah, no, I remember that one.
I've put like 5,000 hours into Smash Brothers altogether,
either through Melee or from Brawl all the way to Ultimate.
Now, it's an addiction at this point.

(04:04):
I'm never getting any better, obviously.
Like, I start off really bad in video games
and I just try my best and it just ends up really badly
anyways, but it's just fun.
It's an addiction.
It is fun.
I got a chance to play it once on a giant LED screen.
Nice.
It was, yeah, it was a sample,

(04:24):
sample panel's a part of a larger wall
that's supposed to be put into a church.
Okay.
And, but the thing was, is that this thing was like
four feet away from my eyes.
So, I am, my neck is whipping around like,
I'm watching a tennis match while we're playing this game.
I didn't win that one.
And like Smash Brothers,
there's only a couple people that I do maim,
maim, not maim.

(04:45):
Right.
And, but it's never, it's never great.
Most of the time I just have like a couple of moves
that I just know that are gonna work for me.
What I wanna know is, and this is a question
that I came up with at the top of my head,
who do you maim in Smash Brothers
and why does it reflect who hurt you in your life?
That's the best question.
Ganondorf and my father.

(05:05):
Oh.
Yes.
No, no, no, I maim Pichu because it's very small and adorable.
Yes.
Doesn't, doesn't reflect anybody that hurt me in life.
Maybe like ex-girlfriends being like super cute
and then like ruining me emotionally for decades.
A lot of, a lot of cute, cute, quick girlfriends.
Just destroying your psyche.

(05:27):
Oh yeah.
No, that's what they're built for, obviously.
I've got two baby girls of my own.
And yeah, I'm pretty sure that the psychiatry,
the psychiatry, going to go to the therapy
is gonna cost me the most in my entire life.
That's something I look forward to.
Yeah.
The, there was a book one time I read,
we passed it around in high school.

(05:48):
It was the guy's guide to dating
and other things too terrible to mention.
It was a great book.
Easy.
It passed, it was like the,
it was like a sisterhood of traveling pants type moment.
That book got into every kid's hand and when I got it,
I never returned it to anybody else.
It's somewhere in my private library.
I think it might be up in the attic somewhere.
But.
I will make sure to note not to give you any books.

(06:09):
Yeah.
Cause I'm just gonna squirreled.
And they're gifts.
It's mine.
It's gone.
But there was one line in there I never forgot.
It was like 16 year old girls are like cats.
If they were any larger, they'd eat us.
That is accurate.
Yeah.
Yeah, very much so.
That, that, that's the reason,
the only reason why I didn't date in high school.
That was it.
Yeah.
Oh, that one was?
Yeah, that was the reason.
Oh, that's the reason.

(06:29):
I'm looking at you right now.
That is not the only reason, but it's, okay.
That makes sense.
I haven't record any of this on my phone.
Oh, you actually have a clip.
I took a picture.
That's it.
Anyway.
You should probably check to see if mine's still recording.
You probably should.
Cause like every 10 minutes it sometimes turns off
or it just stays on for 30 minutes.
I'm not entirely sure.
Go check it out.
Go check it out.
Just, I'll say it out.

(06:49):
Take a look at it back exactly where I was.
Yeah.
Does that work?
Yeah.
It's still working.
All right, good.
Smash Brothers Ultimate.
I main Pichu and I've been maining Pichu in only this one.
I play Ganondorf all the way through Melee,
which is bad because Ganondorf sucks.
Yeah.
Ganondorf also sucks.
Yeah.
But I wanted to learn something brand new.
Pichu is like really fun.

(07:11):
Yeah.
Like all over the place.
Ganondorf.
It was broken at the very beginning of the game.
Yeah.
So I was like, hell yeah.
I get like free wins.
No, it's not like that.
They nerfed them,
but I will say that he is still good
for some wins against newbies.
You know, people who don't understand the mechanics
of the game, you can still, you know,
hit some good slams and the next thing you know, you know,
they're up to like 80% and like two hits.

(07:33):
Pichu wins.
And it just makes life like a thousand times nicer.
I like the ones that give you the ability to counter.
So I'm a huge.
Okay.
Oh my gosh.
Sordy.
Yeah.
The Marth Roy.
Thank you.
Marth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like Marth.
I like Marth.
Roy's pretty good.
You know, I've tried out Marth,
but his tippers are so difficult for me to really pick up.

(07:54):
Yeah.
Just because of the amount of spacing
that is required there.
It requires like talent that I don't have.
There's a finesse that somehow I found myself
in the realm for, I don't, I don't know where I found it.
I just picked it up one day.
I was like, you're my guy.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
I'm a little too ungebunked for that,
but I mean, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Well, when I'm feeling like that,
then I pick up Donkey Kong.

(08:14):
Yeah.
Just keep slapping the ground.
Nobody can get around me.
It's great.
Bring it to me.
Yeah.
All right.
So, you know, video games.
Back on topic.
Yeah.
Back on topic.
You know, but this, we can't all be gloom and doom,
but I'll be honest with you.
Right.
I think these episodes, I'll be honest with you.
I have found that talking about loss brings out,
especially if it's an older loss,

(08:34):
will bring sometimes a little bit of levity
and more lighthearted conversation
because of the fact that they've been able to deal with it.
Yeah, that's good.
I've had a couple of people ask me,
it's like, hey, Michael, can I get on your podcast?
I just lost my mom.
And I'm like, you just like, dude, are you sure?
Like, are you sure you want to do this?
This isn't necessarily free therapy.
You know, it's just a way for you to say stuff out loud.

(08:57):
Yeah.
Exactly.
You know, let people know how you dealt with it
because other people out there may have dealt with it
the same way and felt weird about it.
You know, like, I don't know.
Like there have been stories that I haven't heard,
but I've heard other stories that led me into wanting to get
into this kind of thing where people,
they do like small bits of self harm,
like, you know, picking at their nails excessively

(09:17):
when they get stressed or when they start thinking about
like loss, they'll find themselves like picking the hair
out of their fricking eyebrows.
It's weird.
That's a weird point.
But it's the way that they cope.
And I just want to let people know that, you know,
these different stories are going to be something that,
hopefully that you, you may see yourself in
or you may see others in and you're going to learn
how to either be there for people when they're coping

(09:38):
or learn a new way of coping yourself or realize
that maybe you're not just a weirdo.
Right.
And everybody has their own different styles
of coping mechanisms at the end of the day.
So even if you think you're not coping the right way,
it's still a coping mechanism.
And it's allowing you to at least live through it
and make that memory.
And hell, if you, even if you're just a crier

(09:59):
and you happen to be a dude, which a lot of dudes
when they start crying, the people around them going,
man, you need a man up.
Yeah, fuck those guys.
Yeah.
You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
You already have enough at that point.
I'll go ahead and start with my main question on here.
And which the people that you said that you've,
the people that you said you lost your life in,
there are other things that you've lost as well.
But the people you said were your grandmother

(10:20):
and a friend from high school.
Do you want to talk about one of those
and how that helped shape your life to where you are at now?
I've actually had a couple of friends from high school
that ended up dying.
And I don't know if they've really shaped my life.
It was just the thing that happened.
And the way that you deal with it just kind of forms how,
I don't know where I'm going with this.

(10:42):
That's right, with a ramble.
Everybody that has died around me
as far as friend groups are concerned from high school
or from middle school or something,
they were friends of friends.
So I wasn't the one that was directly impacted
by all of it.
Brett Moore, a friend of mine from high school,
just like, I want to say it was adjacent,
but not necessarily completely adjacent.

(11:04):
He ended up dying from hanging himself back in 2012.
Oh, wow.
And that was difficult for our entire friend group.
And I didn't directly get affected by it,
but I watched all of my friends be affected
by that massive loss.
Yeah, well, which that itself,
I mean, just observing other people dealing with loss,

(11:25):
does, you know, to borrow the term
from role-playing games, psychic damage.
True.
And you find yourself, especially if you happen to be
a person who empathizes or really understands
just from the way that people express themselves,
kind of what they're going through.
You know, you find yourself,
how you feel mirroring maybe what they're going through.

(11:47):
So I'm one of those people who,
as my therapist tells me, this isn't a good thing,
but who tries to mind read.
So if I'm seeing people go through a tough situation,
I'm starting to try to think, it's like,
oh, they're thinking like this, this is what they need.
I've learned as I've gotten older
to express those ideas, especially to them,

(12:07):
is like, hey, I think you're feeling this,
I don't know, how are you doing?
Can I help?
Do you want me to help?
Do you want me to just be here?
Right.
Which, you know, sometimes loss can, you know,
it's a tertiary effect on people.
It's not necessarily the thing that hits you.
Right.
And in my personal point of view,
when it comes to that sort of thing,
I tend to just try to be as positive as physically possible,

(12:31):
but that also means that in my style of coping,
I'm not able to really voice any of the concerns
that are happening.
So even though, like I've had friends that died,
it's, I guess a negative style of like dealing with that,
just by saying like, it's okay,
that sort of stuff happens,

(12:51):
but that doesn't necessarily mean
that you work all the way through it.
And I don't think I necessarily have.
I mean, even with this style of conversation
where we're talking about this,
I'm not, I haven't really worked through it.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
There's a lot of things that I still haven't worked through.
Like there are some people who say that
if a certain important person in your family dies,

(13:12):
like say your mom and dad, which both of mine have passed.
Want to talk about that?
Yeah, thank you.
They, I didn't get to see the bodies.
I had the chance to see moms and I turned her down.
And dad passed away before I had a chance to go to Oklahoma
and he got handled or his body got cremated
before I got to see it.
So there are people out there who's going,

(13:32):
oh man, you'll never get that closure.
And for mom, it was a little easier.
I actually would much rather prefer to remember her
in the ways that I remembered her
because it had been in a couple of days.
I feel honestly that it's easier to not see them
and just remember how they were
because I get this like weird feeling
when it comes to like dead people that they're not there.

(13:54):
Like you're seeing just some body
that's kind of just laying down in a casket or something.
There's not really a person there anymore.
And they kind of, if I see somebody in a casket,
like an open casket, it's like,
it kind of ruins my view on who they were
as a person beforehand.
And that's a weird thing.
Especially if, because not everybody who deals

(14:17):
with cadavers in any situation
as far as preparing them for open viewing
or anything like that, they're not all
with the same kind of, they don't have the same.
Some of them you have talent.
Back together, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they don't have the same talent.
And so some of them, yeah, they look like
dolled up effigies of a memory.
Right.
Now the one person who in my life

(14:40):
that I've seen an open casket, I haven't seen many,
but my grandfather, the people who he chose,
he was the kind of guy who was like,
I am going to make sure that every aspect
of what happens to me after I die is gonna be handled.
So I think that he was interviewing people.
He's like, hey, show me your body of work, so to speak.

(15:02):
I wanna make sure you're gonna handle me with grace.
Body of work.
Right, right, right.
Thank you, thank you.
Hesitated I'm saying it, but I'm glad
to follow through, Landon.
Yay, it worked, yeah.
But no, he looked immaculate.
He looked like he was laying down for a nap.
I'll be honest with you, he looked better
than the last time I saw him,
which had been like a couple of years.
That's nice, yeah.
That's really nice.
But you don't get that every time.

(15:23):
So I could definitely, don't get that so often
that it's starting to become the thing is like,
no, I'd rather not.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because like when, if I see somebody who is like dead,
dead, if you see somebody who's not taken care of
in the right way, it puts like a finality into it
that they are no longer there and that the person

(15:45):
is actually gone gone.
But I feel like if you see somebody who is alive
one second and then I don't actually see their caskets
the next, then they're still kind of alive
in my point of view.
Sure, which I think some therapists may say that,
hey, we gotta figure out a way to let it go.

(16:06):
But there's something to be said for real life,
being real with yourself and going,
yes, I'm not going to see this person again,
but holding their memories in a brighter light.
I think I got a better way to say it now.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
I feel like if somebody is,
maybe I don't have the right way to say it.
If you see somebody who is alive

(16:27):
and you get to actually experience life with them,
but as soon as they die,
I don't want to see them in their casket
because there's almost that little bit of denial
in the back of your head where that person
is still kind of alive.
And you can still live for them
because you're doing something for them.
Absolutely.
But if you see them actually dead,
dead in the casket, just ready to go into the ground,
it's like their story is over.

(16:50):
You're no longer doing something for them.
They're no longer there.
They're in the next place,
whatever happens to be that in your religion or something.
But that doesn't, it means that they're not there with you.
And I feel that that ruins the memory almost.
It's that little bit of denial
that you can have in the back of your head
to help move on,
but also to continue doing something for them

(17:10):
as in living for them.
Is there anything that you're doing right now in your life
that you feel either started due to a loss
and wanting to keep a memory or an idea going?
I don't know.
My mother left when I was really young,
so when I was eight.
So the idea of maybe she was dead,

(17:31):
that always just messed with my head in a way like,
okay, well, if she's actually dead, I can just move on.
But if she's not dead
and she's just out there living her life,
that means that I can,
I'm not doing something for her
and she's just doing something away.
So I have to figure out at a young age,
how to even cope with the loss of that.

(17:52):
Now, it turns out she's still alive.
She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba or something like that.
She's having a good old time.
But as a young kid trying to figure out that
and try to wrap your mind around it,
it makes things slightly difficult.
Yeah.
My parents did a really good job session with my mom.
Did a really good job pushing the rest of the family away.
So my idea of family was just me, my mom and my dad.

(18:14):
Like everybody else was mostly still alive.
And mom talked about definitely her side of the family.
But I got to see my grandparents,
maybe every once in a little while
and there was always like a weird tension in the house
whenever we did just because mom, she just is what she did.
She just pushed people away.
And I didn't get really to figure out
how that was going to affect me later in life

(18:35):
until after they pass away.
And I'm approaching my family.
I'm like, hey, I'm Michael.
Nice to meet you.
I know that we're basically getting to know each other
because mom.
That makes you almost like estranged to your own family.
It does.
That's that.
And then they were worried that I was like mom and dad
that every conversation ended with, hey, how can you help me?
And once they learned after a few conversations

(18:57):
that I'm not doing that, you know,
I'm actually just saying, hey, how you doing?
Hope you're living well.
You don't have to give me money for this conversation.
It opened that relationship back up.
A little bit.
Yeah.
I got two aunts and an uncle now who I barely
knew existed only by name alone, maybe,
is the only reason I knew him.
And now we have good conversations.

(19:19):
I'm old enough that I cherish Facebook.
Right.
Yeah.
Keep in touch with family.
It's not going to follow me on TikTok.
Plus, that allows you to see family members that you didn't
even know you had.
Exactly.
Yeah.
There was an uncle out in California.
Turns out his whole thing is that he lives in California,
but he works for a museum.
So he gathers a whole bunch of old, cool, historical facts

(19:41):
on Facebook.
And I would have never known about that.
I just kept living in that sphere that my mom had established.
Right.
This is also weird.
I haven't actually done this sort of thing.
So I feel like every conversation,
I have to say it perfectly.
But I guess this is more like a conversation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is definitely more free form.
Now, there's a couple of podcasts out there.
I'm listening to this one right now because I basically

(20:03):
hit the roulette wheel on trying to figure out
what I wanted to listen to.
And so I went to Spotify.
It was like, give me random podcast.
And it gave me this one called Well Now, Well, Comma Now.
And it's all about how people, how they deal with wellness,
how they feel like wellness culture affects them,
or part of wellness culture that they subscribe to.

(20:25):
Right.
And I listened to them every conversation.
Yeah, it's polished.
It's clipped.
You can tell they're reading from a piece of paper, which
the only pieces of paper that I have are just suggestions.
Yeah.
So I listened to the Murder Mystery sort of podcasts
every so often that my wife sends me.
And they always sound so crisp and clean.
And I'm like, I wish I could sound like that normal conversation.

(20:46):
It never occurred to me that they might just
be reading off a script.
Yeah.
So they'll have a script.
They'll have highlights.
And the more sponsors that this is what I thought I'd
This is what I'm picking up.
There's more sponsors that you have, the more time and preparation
you have to write a script and be able to read it perfectly.
Oh my goodness, that makes so much sense.
Yeah.
And my only sponsor happens to be this ad

(21:07):
that I'm going to read right now.
That's right.
This ad read right here.
Hey, this is Michael LeBlanc, your guide
through It's Your Laws podcast.
Before we delve back in, this is a reminder that my memoir,
Dink, D&D in the coffin hold of the USS Enterprise,
is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble as an e-book
and as a paperback on Amazon.

(21:30):
It's a memoir from the ages of five to 23
and a journey through all the losses, triumph, and magic
that tabletop RPGs gave me to help me keep saying and to heal.
Grab your copy because your support
keeps this quet podcasting and exploring loss alive.
Now let's get back to the story unfolding
on It's Your Laws podcast.

(21:52):
See?
Painless.
Painless.
Just like that.
I would have gotten you to read it,
but I feel like it would sound hollow.
You haven't read my book yet, so you know.
Yeah, not yet.
Yeah, not yet.
I mean, I can try.
You know what?
This is what this podcast is turned into.
Go ahead and tell my book, Crack Open Chapter 1.
We're just going to sit here and have you read out loud.
Hello, let me fly.
Oh my goodness.
OK, so I feel like this is more like a pop quiz.

(22:15):
Like, I'm supposed to have this already memorized
at this point completely.
I can tell you were not ready for this.
Am I wearing underwear?
Am I wearing pants?
For the viewers at home, I'm not.
Yeah.
I was like, why wear pants when you're just
being shown from the waist up?
I mean, you got to be free.
All right, so.
Actually, for the viewers at home,
they don't even notice that there's two cats here.

(22:35):
That's true.
Yeah.
There could be a secret third cat
that nobody's actually seeing.
The ceiling cat.
There's always ceiling cat.
All right, so.
Let's talk about the other losses
that you were talking about.
The points that were not people losses.
I believe you mentioned lost about jobs, which is very valid.

(22:56):
It can definitely.
Can we start from the very beginning?
Yeah, but you know what?
Welcome out of the podcast.
9-11.
I think it's the last.
No.
So, but no, tell me about some losses that.
I get.
I stay up at night just thinking about if Taco Bell ever
got rid of the Crunchwrap Supreme.
And I feel like that that is a thing that would just ruin me.

(23:18):
Honestly, I cry myself to sleep every night.
I mean, that's like just because I'm a millennial,
honestly, but sometimes it's because I'm thinking about it.
I feel you.
I would be ruined.
Taco Bell is such a guilty.
I mean, they already got rid of like the amount of lettuce
or the amount of meat that's on the inside.
So it's not the right sort of Crunchwrap Supreme.

(23:39):
They've also gotten rid of people who know how to roll a burrito properly.
So every bite is a different.
I mean, they hire at like $7.25 an hour still.
So I mean, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
McDonald's.
McDonald's since 2009.
Yeah.
You know, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Is that what happened with us?
Taco Bell, when you're here, you're here.

(24:02):
Get used to it.
Yeah.
So having no money, just the loss of money
is like detrimental to sanity.
Yeah.
Honestly, I've got three kids for the viewers at home,
only have one if you're ever thinking about it
or zero, that's probably the best.
Because then you might have a little bit of money.
But right now, I got to tell you, even if I make $10,000 more,
I still feel like I'm making $10,000 less.

(24:24):
Well, as an adult, the more money you get, the more things find you to take that money away.
Right.
So right.
What I could do with $10,000 right now, fix the things in my house
and maybe buy a gaming PC, which is what I've always wanted.
But of course, losing jobs, losing any sort of income, it sucks.

(24:44):
And the idea of not having that sort of thing in the bank accounts,
especially with a family, is rough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So have you found yourself in a situation like that where you're like,
oh, shit, I just lost a point of income?
2020, honestly.
I feel like everybody did.
Happened to me twice.

(25:05):
Yeah, twice.
I just bought a house, 2019.
And we had our daughter five days later, which was fantastic.
And we were living the high life in December.
And then one month later, COVID hit the United States.
Everybody started going into lockdown in February and by March, I was out of income.

(25:26):
Nobody was hiring.
I got laid off.
So that's just a lot of bills.
And then trying to find something from the ground up sucks.
So how do you feel that you mentally dealt with it?
What was your first?
Mentally, cried every single night.
And then I played Animal Crossing when it finally came out.
Oh, you were on the lucky one.
I tried to get that.
Didn't work for me.

(25:46):
Couldn't find a console.
Couldn't find a game.
Really?
I just doubled down on Xbox.
So I had three Nintendo switches over at the house.
Yeah, because I'm a nerd.
You were prepared.
Yeah.
Well, I have kids really like playing video games also.
And my wife really likes playing video games.
So we need to have like a Nintendo switch for everywhere.
And Nintendo family, huh?
Yeah, pretty good.
Of course.
Yeah.
If my wife did want to play games, which she doesn't.

(26:08):
She doesn't understand gaming at all.
In fact, we had a conversation the other day.
She was like, yeah, my parents didn't spend time on that shit.
Her words exactly.
And I felt like she physically attacked me.
But I realized that she was just being real.
She was being herself.
But the time that she has played video games,
but the time that she was a nanny,
she would play Mario.
Right.
So she was she's a Nintendo fan as well.

(26:28):
OK, that makes sense.
Yeah.
But all the stuff that I play on the Xbox,
like I play like every once in a while,
I want to dive into Superhot, which is just.
Yeah, it's good.
It's a great game.
I love it.
And she her words.
I hate this game.
I'm like, who hurt you?
It's just really.
Yeah.
I don't know.
My wife grew up in a household where
her brothers played fighting games and soccer games.

(26:51):
And that was it.
And she was, of course, the girl who
wasn't allowed to play video games.
Or she was given a controller that didn't necessarily work.
So she definitely did not like playing video games
until I forced her to play Breath of the Wild for the first time.
And she was like, oh, I kind of like this.
And then I forced her to play Skyrim.
And she was like, oh, my goodness, I love this.
And then I showed her Stardew Valley.

(27:12):
And she's never wanted to play any other game since then.
Moral of the story, don't show your wife or girlfriend
Stardew Valley, because that will be there next few months.
Yeah.
Stardew Valley is one of those games
that I found late in life.
And by late, I mean November of last year.
And it's been it's it's been an addiction.

(27:32):
Yeah.
And it's been one of those games that I go to when
every other game in my library just seems too much.
Mm-hmm.
You know, like just too much to do.
Sometimes I just want to relax and chill.
And then, you know, go in the cave,
slap a couple of monsters around with a wooden sword.
Because I don't know.
I always find myself romancing Sam.
Oh, because he's a man child.

(27:53):
And that just like screams to me a little bit.
I feel that, man.
I get that.
And maybe that's just like my heart
longing for hanging out with the bros again.
But yeah, no, he just he speaks to me.
You know, it's interesting.
This is actually something that we can keep on topic
and actually talk about.
So I got Starfield.
And with Bethesda, what it likes to do is,

(28:14):
especially in its longer games, it wants to give you
the chance to romance the characters that you're with.
Of course.
And one of the the first time I ever played,
there's this character and there's names Barrett.
He is this.
He's kind of a space scoundrel.
I'm getting serious Han solo vibes from him.
Actually, he can get along with pirates as well as,

(28:35):
you know, the more stuffy shirt political types.
Anyway, as I was fine that you were
mancing like these fake characters and stuff in video games.
Is that because you weren't loved properly as a child?
You know, it very well could be, you know.
You know what?
I'm going to stop paying my therapist.
Sam, you just need to come around more often.
That's what they all.

(28:56):
I'm cheaper.
Yeah.
I bought you off of the thing of water.
No, water is really good.
The yeah, it is the filter.
We got here is great.
Bramperetta just heads different.
I'm telling you, it's properly chills.
Crisp.
It's almost as good as McDonald's.
But anyway, so yeah, I wind up romancing Barrett
because I feel I feel like he's the good character.
And you know, spoiler alert, if you want to fast forward

(29:18):
to like what looks like it's going to be, maybe, I don't know,
it's going to be edited.
Spoiler alert.
The character who you're romancing
gets thrown into a situation where it's either them
or the rest of the people that you're adventuring with.
I haven't actually played the video game.
You're ruining this for me.
Yeah.
Man, you have I know.
You have no idea when it's coming, though.

(29:40):
OK, that's a good point.
That's a good point.
I'm never going to play Starfield, but I mean, continue.
But yeah, so I with a big heart that I am goes,
you know, the means of the mini, the way the needs of the few,
and the way that the story was told because one.
You killed off the love of your life.
I let him die.
I let him die.
And so did she get to go to the place and see his dead body

(30:01):
and he's being like cradled by the one person who
was there with him.
With the graphics.
Yeah, obviously, you know, you probably go over to his eyes
or just wide open his mouth still moving.
But you know, he's dead.
The ragdoll physics is still there.
He's just kind of like flailing around.
But I'm going to be real like for as much as I was in that moment,
I was immersed.

(30:22):
Dude, I actually I actually went through like a very quick flash
of the five of the five stages.
Like, you know, no.
I was angry at the the antagonist the way that he's supposed to.
It's good storytelling one.
If a story can do that, I've had books do that too.
Stephen King writes great characters that when they've

(30:43):
gotten lost killed.
Oh, yeah, you get lost.
I threw a book one time.
I just was like, it hit spine first in the wall.
And if you hit anything with the spine of a book,
you're damaging it.
A spine of a book is a very thick, hard object.
Especially Stephen King.
Because if you throw the stand, that's basically a brick.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You know who's spine wasn't strong now.
That would be Stephen King's when he got hit by that van.

(31:05):
But he's OK now.
He's OK now.
I know about that.
Yeah, you know, he wrote that into his own books.
That's how much.
Keep in the Stephen King lore.
Let's just talk about him for the next 40 minutes.
Yes, the cocaine induced writing session.
Oh, you were a writer, weren't you?
Yeah.
So you know all about that.
Yeah, just massive amounts of Escobar style cocaine

(31:26):
that I keep piled up just to meet the deadlines.
Oh, I mean, you have to with this economy.
It's a poor economy.
It's a poor economy.
Oh, so all right.
So I admitted.
And I imagine that you were being.
Admitted like I was being interrogated.
Yeah, I know, right?
Yeah.
That you cried when you realized that, you know,

(31:48):
holy shit, I got this family, this house,
and everything to take care of, and everything like that.
Was there anything else?
Was your relationship, did it feel any strain?
Were you feeling like anger, resentment, or anything?
Like how did that, how did that play out?
Actually, no, no point was our relationship ever put in jeopardy
even a little bit.
But it was the idea that I wasn't enough to be able to support

(32:09):
my own children or the wife that has already given me so much.
I felt like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to.
Right.
And that just wrecked me emotionally.
And I want to say like physically for like a while,
I felt like six in my stomach almost every single day
thinking I have to wake up, I'm going to go into the living room,

(32:29):
I'm going to apply for as many positions as I can throughout
the entire country, does not matter where it is,
as long as it puts food on the, into the bank accounts
and food on the table.
You're a, sound like a guy who likes to hit the ground running.
Yeah.
Not a lot of time for wallowing on, on the dime, so to speak.
Yeah.
Just wears at you over time.

(32:50):
And I, I don't know if I could ever do that ever again,
but if I did get the experience now to have to deal with it.
I, I went through, I know I went through like anger,
definitely depression, not some, actually I did do a little bit
of bargaining when I got let go of Delta.
I should write down all of the five stages so that way I could
just reference them.

(33:10):
Yeah.
Cause that would have been a lot easier.
I didn't even think about it.
I did not plan for the podcast even slightly.
Actually bring that up a lot of times during the conversations
that we've had.
Right.
And it's, if anybody who is actually listening to this,
you may see like a progression of conversation and
cohesiveness and maybe even quality because I'm,
I'm learning as I go along and remembering to read things that

(33:31):
I forgot to read before even starting the stamp thing.
Right.
But we're just kind of going off the wall while we're here.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And if I, if I was really good, I would have like a second computer.
It's like right here.
You were good.
I could just like pull things up.
But if we were good, we would have had actual equipment and
actual computer professionals, definitely not us here.

(33:52):
No, I would have definitely ghost written this.
The cats would definitely be here.
Yeah.
Obviously.
Actually, you know what?
They're the main stars.
Put them in front of the camera.
God, that's what people want to see.
That's right.
Yeah.
It's a view.
It's like, yeah, that's how you do it.
Well, these cats have personality.
They do.
They do.
And some of it is entirely too much.
They need to, you know, realize who's paying them or feeding them.

(34:14):
Well, they know who God in this house.
It's them.
Seriously.
So I have a question.
Delta.
Yeah, Delta.
That's right.
I wrote it down.
As you say.
Good job.
Good job.
Somebody's getting their shit together.
I'm glad.
So 2020, I was working for Delta.
Started in actually 2019 because I quit my job at McDonald's

(34:36):
because I realized after having an introspective moment of staring
into the friars, the fries were burbling, I said out loud.
And my crew was worried about me.
I said out loud, this job's going to kill me.
And they were like, Michael, you OK?
I'm like, I don't know.
So sort of after that, I quit.
I started at Delta.
But I was last.
So how princesses usually look into some puddle

(34:58):
and see their reflection.
They're like, who am I?
You looked into the fryer with all the fry bits
and you're like, hmm, who am I?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Who am I?
Is there longevity in this?
There was not.
So the job that I found, I was last in first out, basically.
Because COVID hit, lockdowns happened, jobs were affected,
especially in the airline business.

(35:19):
And I was in the mechanic area.
But still, if flights aren't happening, money's not coming in
and people aren't getting paid, I've got to do what I've got to do.
So I actually did a little bit of bargaining
when they called me one morning.
They gave the most bullshit answer, or a bullshit reason.
They said I had stolen food from the fridge.
And that was the reason I let them go.
And I'm like, well, let's just come up with a reason.

(35:40):
Well, yeah.
Like, yeah.
It's better for the metrics than to say, oh no,
this pandemic is getting us.
And we have to start cutting.
Better for the stock?
Yeah.
Others also.
Right.
So we got rid of a thief instead of cutting down for that.
But anyway, I was like, no, I don't know where
you got your information.
Like, I was pleading with the, because I was through a mediary

(36:01):
staffing service.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so I told him, it's like, you need to find out who you're talking to,
who told you that, because, I mean, that's some bullshit.
And so she got back in touch with me about 30 minutes later.
And I was like, no, I'm sorry.
This is it.
You're not going back to there.
I was like, OK.
That puts you on the bad side for the staffing service also.
It did.
But two weeks later, she got a letter from the guy saying, hey,

(36:26):
this is actually what happened.
Because he evidently, I don't know, never really got a chance
to talk to him.
But I'd like to thank you.
He thought, I don't want to ruin this kid's future.
What kid?
I was 35, 30 something years old either way.
I don't want to ruin this kid's future.
Here recently, I'm starting to think of myself as adult evidently.
No, everything was fine with them.
But I didn't go through that staffing agency again.
Goumar in appearance.
Jen Z at heart.

(36:47):
Exactly.
There we go.
That's what it is.
And so I found another job.
That one after I got lost, after I got lost,
after they let me go out of the second job,
that one was just disappointment.
Because I knew it was coming.
It was owned by an overseas company.
And the overseas company was looking at us over here
in America going, you guys don't know how to handle yourself
during all of this.

(37:07):
So cut 50% of your workforce.
Again, last and first out.
But no, the way that Delta went, dude, I seriously
got a flash of just anger, depression, bargaining,
eventually acceptance.
Because what am I going to do?
Go up to Delta.
Just walk in.
Go, hey, my badge isn't clocking me in for some reason.
What's this about?

(37:29):
So it just goes to show that, and I've said this before,
that losing denial and acceptance.
Definitely bargaining.
Yeah, denial.
There was a little bit of denial.
I definitely didn't have to Google the five stages of grief
because I didn't actually remember what it was.
Good job on doing that when the camera wasn't on you.
I mean, not when the camera wasn't on you.

(37:50):
But no, so it doesn't matter exactly what you're losing.
Will and can trigger those feelings in you.
And it's perfectly valid because we, as humans,
don't like things to change.
We don't like to lose things.
Which is, I think, why I find so much solace in Buddhism
the way I do.
Because it's kind of taught me to let go of things.

(38:11):
Because the wanting to hold on to things,
whether or not even if it's a memory or if it's an idea,
a job, a person, the wanting of that person
to be a solid thing in your life causes suffering.
And there's a lot of things, actually, it turns out,
that causes suffering.
But that's one of them as well.
And so if you can free yourself from that,

(38:32):
that's a huge relief on just going through life.
And your whole psyche at the end of the day.
Yeah, yeah, it's easier to reconcile yourself
with yourself.
It kind of helps to smooth the rough edges.
Yeah.
All right, so let's see if there's anything else on here.
The only things I have here is Palestine.

(38:54):
Yeah?
That's a lot.
There's a lot.
That's deep.
I don't know.
I don't know if we got time to dig into the Middle East crisis.
Maybe one day.
I mean, you're going to experience loss nowadays
in your day-to-day life.
That is every single moment that you get onto Instagram
or TikTok.
That's all over the For You pages.
That's true.
That's the current piece of news that's going on.
If you're one of those people who want to experience loss

(39:15):
through other people's losses.
Yeah, I don't know if wanting to or that's just the sort of thing.
I also have very non-sequitur sequel movies.
You wanted to be good, but ruined the whole series for you.
Yeah, I'll give a minute to that.
Serenity.
Serenity.
From Firefly?
Yeah.
Did you ever watch that?
I did watch.

(39:36):
Yeah, because I got.
That hurt me on the inside.
I mean, it didn't ruin the whole series.
But Firefly was so good.
And then they ruined it by killing off my man, Wash.
Leave it to win, man.
And yeah, I just, oh, god, yeah.
That one, the win it.
Wait a second.
I'm sorry.
Spoiler alert.
Oh my god.
I'm so sorry, guys.
But the death on that screen was one of the ones

(39:58):
that you physically felt when you saw it.
I cried in the theater.
Hey, I'll cry at a movie.
I have no problem doing that.
Loudly.
They probably had to get me out of there at some point.
It's like, I need to run.
Just gripping onto the curtain down
at the very bottom, like, sweeping tears into it.
The minimum wage workers that work
at the theater having to drag me out of there by my feet

(40:21):
as I'm clawing at the ground.
Whoa.
It's so loud.
Happens to the fast bus.
And then there's movies that have come along that, like you
said, that weren't as good as they wanted to be.
And I'm going to go ahead and defend it
when it first came out, because it was cool.
Star Wars equals Star Wars.
He whispers into the compression mic.

(40:43):
Now, look, Star Wars, for me, is a great time for me
to just sit down with my brain turned off.
They can give me almost anything, even if it's some BS,
like, hey, the emperor's back.
Woo.
OK, replace the emperor, OK?
Yeah.
With Jar Jar Binks.
If they brought Jar Jar Binks back, OK?
All of a sudden, the movies go from, man,
this is like a really bad series to,

(41:04):
this is the best series of all time,
and everything's going to be memed.
I can't believe they were so pulled.
Right.
It's like, um, but no, the same character, same lines,
same delivery, Jar Jar Binks.
Oh, man.
Right?
Dude, you should have been in that boardroom.
I should have.
They must have been.
The newest Matrix movie.
Oh, I haven't seen it.

(41:24):
Which I had to watch it twice to understand it,
which it's a Wachowski film.
I understand, you know, they got layers.
But this one, it was, it's meta, man.
It's very meta.
It's very self-aware.
And I think maybe it was a logical step to make.
If you were in a room by yourself with your sister

(41:46):
for long enough and you were just throwing ideas back and forth
like they were.
Yeah.
But I think to the rest of the public, we were all like,
we, we didn't, we understand.
We didn't want this.
Right.
Right.
The only thing that I know about it is that it was set in the new world
that they had left from and into.

(42:07):
Yeah.
And it was like he was famous and a movie star.
Yeah.
And that's, that's all that I know about it.
I haven't actually watched it.
I've only heard bad things.
Yeah.
The, the loss, the loss that I got there was not having any of my expectations
met or even how did that make you feel?
Yeah.
Don't ignore it.

(42:28):
They need to go back to the board.
I will take a Snyder cut of that please.
Everything that was on the cutting room floor, just put it back on there.
Just put it back in.
Give me a lot of slow motion.
That'll make my broken heart feel a lot.
They just needed to do an animatrix version of it.
Oh yeah.
As the name.
You know what?
The animatrix was great.
That was great.
I'll do that.
It was just little clippets of things here and there that just made the whole thing

(42:50):
you know.
There was a lot in that that stuck with me.
But you know what really stuck with me out of the animatrix was the,
the one where they're just in the city, you know, and then in that town
and then there's that house that had all the glitches in it and whatnot
because it was like a broken point.
The gravity was all wrong.
Yeah.
Got it.
Well, I mean, even the Star Wars series ended up doing something like that.
Yeah.
With the, I can't even remember what it's called now,

(43:11):
where they had like the anime versions of different Star Wars episodes.
Yeah, Visions.
That was fantastic.
Yeah.
If more series ended up doing that, that would be great.
The second one looks like it's going to be,
looks like it's going to be really good.
Oh, they're having a second one.
Yeah, the Visions.
Oh yeah.
Something like that.
Yeah.
They came out, I think, a little bit before they did What If to for Marvel.
Yeah.
They did What If 2.

(43:31):
Yeah.
I gotta go back and watch that then.
And the way they released it was really weird.
They didn't release it all at once.
They didn't release it every week.
They released it every day for a week.
Weird.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So you just, you know, had to sit there every single day.
Let's come back.
Or you just wait a week and do the whole thing.
So let's talk about real quick, because I think once this conversation ends and

(43:52):
when I'll put that, that'll be.
This is a lot that you're going to have to sift through, man.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's okay.
You know, it's a burden of love.
So out of everything that you've ever lost or everything that has changed.
It was a lost podcast.
Yeah, it was.
Oh, right.
Yeah, it was a lost podcast.
I know we got a little.
Side tracks.
Star Trek, Star Wars.

(44:12):
I was talking about Star Trek.
Video games.
Video games.
You covered a lot of topics.
I'm fumbling over my own words.
How do you do it?
You're doing a really good job.
Does English.
You're doing a really good job for your first podcast.
Oh, thank you very much.
I was very nervous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm sweating profusely if you can't tell at the moment.
But what I was going to ask is out of all the things that have changed or lost in your life,

(44:36):
any of it giving you a plan, a definitive path on how you're going to move forward.
Now you got your family behind you.
You've got you've got a nice van.
You know, my van.
It's on your van.
It doesn't have a hubcap, man.
Oh, nice.
It is holding on for dear life.
Just like me.

(44:56):
Well, so what is what is your future look like?
You know, bleak bleak.
That's good.
Cut.
End of podcast.
The rest of the seven minutes is static.
Perfect.
Do I actually have a plan?
No.
OK.
Has any of this really shaped my life?

(45:16):
I have always gone through the idea of just having a positive attitude towards everything
because that usually ends up with a positive outlook by the end of it.
And it's I don't know if it's worked out for me so far, but I'm going to keep doing
it because I don't know how to do anything else.
So well, I mean, just from the casual conversations that that we've had over this small amount

(45:39):
of time and meeting in person, right, it sounds like that you also have a supportive spouse.
Right.
Which I mean, honestly, with everything else in this entire world, I could not.
I could not do anything without her, including TikTok, apparently, because she's the one
that forced me to get onto it.
Some director Simmons Sam lower.

(46:00):
Yeah.
She was the one that forced me to get on to TikTok in the first place because she was
like, oh, you're going to love it here.
And I'm like, sure, I've got no choice in this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The way you told me the story, it's only she was like giving you your first taste of
smack and she's like, you're coming back.
Oh, yeah.
You're coming back for this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She she forced me onto this platform and so far it has turned out great.

(46:20):
And I blame her completely.
All right.
Well, but how about you?
I don't know how long this podcast is supposed to be.
That's OK.
It's OK.
It runs anywhere from 45 minutes to like a little over an hour.
So we're at the 50 minute point.
So really?
Yeah.
That's that's 50 minutes.
It goes by quick.
It felt like 20.
I'm telling you.
I was like, OK, I'm ready to talk for like the rest of the time.

(46:43):
A good conversation.
I have more conversation topics.
Go ahead.
I wrote down Delta, Crunchwrap Supreme, 9-11.
9-11.
9-11.
9-11.
I was I whispered into the mic as soon as we did intro earlier,
but now we're coming full circle.
So 9-11.
9-11.
I was in bootcamp in 9-11, dude.
Oh, is that what you're going with?
Yeah.
I mean, that's that's where I was.

(47:04):
OK, cool.
Yeah.
For the FBI, who's definitely listening in on this,
he was at bootcamp.
OK.
He wasn't doing anything suspicious.
You can paperwork exists.
The loss that the entire country went through so quickly
and then what all of us have had to deal with since then
has been absolutely bananas.
It has.
There's one of the worst things about it

(47:25):
is I have no problem remembering an event,
remembering the people who died and everything.
What gets me is the amount of shitposts
that get made about 9-11 and cued ready to go.
Because as soon as midnight hits over 9-11, Facebook,
Instagram, they're all inundated with bad country songs,

(47:45):
waving American flags.
And then you have the other side of the things
where people are like 9-11 was fake.
I mean, it's become a circus that coping.
That's coping turned from comedy almost being farcical.
Yeah.
Along those lines, Reddit also had a time limit

(48:07):
on when you could actually say something funny about a tragedy.
And their time limit was 20 years.
So on 2021, 20 years after that, everybody immediately
on midnight posted so many funny dank memes
were just exploding.
And it's such a weird way for the entire country

(48:29):
to come together almost that even though there's
like massive tragedies happening out in the entire world,
that people want to figure out some way
to turn it into a positive and just make fun of it.
Well, that I can understand because tragedy plus time
equals comedy.
Well, yeah.
Some people who are new to the internet
or have only grown up in meme culture

(48:52):
believes that everything needs to be made of meme immediately.
And I think maybe that's where I spent most of my time
amongst those people as I growing up.
You've seen my page.
That's all I do.
Oh, something horrible happening.
I got to make this as a comedy somehow.
And I'm sure that it's going to get me canceled at some point.
I'm really hoping it does, honestly.

(49:12):
There's a dude that I listen to.
Well, watch.
Actually, it's not like he has a podcast or anything.
He said, I don't think he does.
But his name's third person with three i's in the art.
So thiiiRD.
And he is a wordsmith, man.
He is a poet.
One, he also raps too.
So it's freestyle.
That definitely is amazing.
But his spoken TikToks are so tongue in cheek

(49:37):
that it's addressed things about like poverty, homelessness,
mindfulness, and stuff like that.
I think the way that he delivers the bad news mixed in
with that tongue in cheek type, like serious, just
like staring into the camera, just like saying metaphors
and allegories that if you're reading between the lines,
you realize what he's talking about.

(49:59):
I could get behind that too.
I think I need some spoken word slam poetry about 9-11.
I'm ready for it.
We're here.
We're ready.
We're ready.
If you're listening to this and you haven't made it yet,
we're rich to watch it.
I will watch an entire special about tongue in cheek
comedy about 9-11, only coming from you, third person.
All right, I think that might be it.

(50:20):
I wrote down Harambe.
Oh.
Are you a?
We'll come back to that in the next one.
I'll save that for next.
OK, that's good.
We'll find out if he or she takes out
or a boobs out for Harambe type situation.
Right, of course.
Titsurass.
Titsurass.
Personality.
It was a trick question, man.
Damn it.

(50:40):
I hosted on my own damn show.
And that's the full answer.
This has been a fucking delight, dude.
Oh my god, thighs were on the menu,
and I completely forgot about that.
Looks like you've done did.
What was I thinking?
Too late.
Too late.
You're a personality guy now.
Right.
For now and for a while.
You know, we should have just cut this like a while ago,
honestly.
When I whispered into the microphone bleak,
that should have been it.
Cut.

(51:00):
Heavy cut.
This could have been static the whole time.
OK.
Well, Sam, where can I find you?
In my home, probably.
Crying.
Nice.
Where can you find me?
On TikTok, at the director Simmons,
or you can find me at at Sam propaganda.
That's S-A-M underscore propaganda.
And I like that channel, honestly, a lot more.

(51:20):
There's very few followers.
You definitely go there.
On YouTube, I am.
I'm going to have to look it back up.
Obviously, I completely forgot.
That's OK.
Because I just like put that together, you know.
It would make it sound like you knew exactly what was going on
and had everything prepped.
I had a head actual.
On YouTube, you can find me at at Sam propaganda also.
Nice.
I only got two videos there, but I'm probably

(51:41):
going to make some more long-form content on there
in the future.
So look out for that.
Look out.
And I've been your host, Michael Blanc.
And well, if you miss next month's episode,
it's still your loss.
I'll talk to you guys later.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
And